This invention is concerned with oil clean up and removal from bodies of water, and is more particularly concerned with an oil mop which permits efficient by-hand pickup of oil from a body of water, which can be an ocean, lake, stream, harbor, or the like.
Rapid clean up of spilled oil or other petroleum products requires simple, effective equipment which can be put into use quickly after an incident is discovered, which makes efficient use of its absorptive surfaces, and which can accommodate rapid turn around and disposal of the oil picked up by the equipment.
A number of oil pick up arrangements have been proposed which incorporate a fibrous oleophilic or petrophilic (oil absorbing) material to cleanse oil from the surface of water. Typical among these are the arrangements described in McClintock U.S. Pat. No. 3,146,192; Burroughs et al. U.S. Pat. No. 3,667,608; Rhodes U.S. Pat. No. 3,668,118; Downs U.S. Pat. No. 3,669,275; Bogosian U.S. Pat. No. 3,739,913: Yocum U.S. Pat. No. 3,904,528; Crotti U.S. Pat. No. 4,439,324; Lafay et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,919,820; and Rhodes U.S. Pat. No. 3,748,682. In these cases, a quantity of the oleophilic fibrous material which can be a batt, a filled mesh, an arrangement of parallel strips or yarns, or other form, is pulled or dragged across the water's surface. Oil is absorbed into this material, but the water remains behind. These arrangements are typically large booms or machines which cannot be quickly put into service, and cannot easily be worked by individual operators. Among these patents, the Rhodes Pat. No. 4,748,682 involves a hand mop with a handle and a head made of oil absorbing polypropylene strands. However, the mop construction, being substantially identical with a household floor mop, has only limited reach and limited capability for removing oil before it has to be wrung out or cleaned.
Thus, what has not previously been offered is a hand implement that can be worked by a single operator and which can cleanse oil from a relatively large area of a body of water; and which is easy to set up and clean.